Mary Kom – India’s Newest Pride

Mary Kom is the newest pride of the nation. All of a sudden, the whole nation has woken up to the latest pin-up sensation. It has become extremely fashionable to pay respect to what Mary Kom has achieved for her country in the London Olympics 2012.

The constant refrains that one hears in last few couple of days are Mary Kom has won the hearts, she has set high standards, she is the real HERO of the Olympics, she has put her home state on the map of the country and so on and so forth.

All the high profile celebs, politicians, business tycoons and software czars have paid homages to this mother of a twin urging the nation to bow in her respect. The media too has welcomed this new messiah of masses with the arms wide open. The story of Mary Kom goes on and on. We cannot have enough of her.

This Mary Kom wave has now achieved a status of farce. We just don’t know where to stop when some relatively unknown sportperson or film actor breaks on the scene by doing his/her country proud. We end up giving so much of attention that the line between adulation and snobbery blurs making the whole show of spontaneous responses look like a manufactured and short-lived mass hysteria.

The most ridiculous thing is the call to learn something from Mary Kom given by the so-called intelligentsia. Overnight the wisdom that right from the silent PM to the beleagured business tycoon to the struggling Bollywood actress have something to learn from the eternally graceful Mary Kom has dawned upon us.

How can we place the gun on poor Mary Kom’s shoulders and fire? Isn’t it plain hypocrisy? Doesn’t this line of thinking smack of doublestandardness, especially if we consider the fact that we had absolutely no role to play in the first place in the making of Mary Kom? Whatever she is today, she is because of her unmatched passion for boxing and sheer hard-work.

Shouldn’t we now stop paying lip-services to Mary Kom’s many achievements for they belong to her and her alone and get a life? The way she perspired in private to prepare for this battle, she deserves to cherish the success in private so that we don’t see the tears of happiness and pride in her eyes simply because we have no right to see them.

Long live Mary Kom. Thanks for arousing passions and uniting the country.